mahalie

UPDATE: I’ve managed to get everything working on Dreamhost without running PHP as CGI. (That is, everything WP-related that I use).

Dreamhost auto-CHMODs your domain to protect it when you turn off PHP as CGI. Initially, to test it really quick I changed the whole dern site to 777 (not recommended) just long enough to test the site, update permalinks and activate Text Control. It all worked. So, I re-CHMOD all the files to 644 and all the folders to 755. Exceptions are .htaccess, sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz – which changed to 666. (Sitemap files for the Google Sitemap plugin). I got nervous about the .htaccess and changed it back to 644 after the permalinks updated.

General FYI, this info would have really helped me!

Ooh, this sucks. I was trying to use the Text Control plugin for all my blogs. I have one blog with Dreamhost that is quite old and never ran with PHP as CGI and so it works fine, as does Text Control. I cannot get Text Control to work on my new blogs, so I changed them to not run as CGI and now everything is broken – error message:
Warning: main(/home/.elfa/mahalie/23rdworld.com/wp-config.php): failed to open stream: Permission denied in /home/.elfa/mahalie/23rdworld.com/wp-blog-header.php on line 12

Fatal error: main(): Failed opening required '/home/.elfa/mahalie/23rdworld.com/wp-config.php' (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/.elfa/mahalie/23rdworld.com/wp-blog-header.php on line 12

I wonder if Dreamhost automatically re-CHMODs all site directories. I’ve had CHMOD related nighmares before so I’m not going to mess with it. No Text Control for me, I guess.

I’m no hacker, but probably waiting and upgrading to 1.5.2 would be a good possible start.

I had similar problems with a plugin a while ago – some just don’t work on new builds till they get updated too.

Another helping hand from the great folks over at the dreamhost forum:

$DOCUMENT_ROOT should actually be $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']. Maybe the current WP release is turning off register_globals?

That worked too, so I’m going to use it since the name of my server could change someday! It’s also more transferrable to any other templates on other domains than typing the literal file path (and easier for PHP noobs like me to use).

include(ABSPATH."/includes/top-nav.php");

didn’t work for me…nor did it work after ommitting that first forward slash, since it’s already included in ABSPATH. ABSPATH seems to point to the directory of the WP install, as opposed to the theme folder as TEMPLATEPATH does, and not to the absolute path of the site/domain which is what I needed since the includes are used site-wide and are stored in directories above the WP install.

And just to clarify for others having similar problems, it’s true that URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration with Dreamhost, which is good because referencing URL’s introduces a lot of security risk. Imagine being able to run a program off of anyone’s server by using include('https://domain.com/file.php');

Someone on the Dreamhost forum gave me a workaround (obviously I do not know much about PHP). I replaced:

<?php include($DOCUMENT_ROOT."/includes/top-nav.php"); ?>

with the literal FILE PATH (not the URI), which in my case is something like:

<?php include("/home/.servername/accountname/
domainname.com/includes/top-nav.php"); ?>

I’m a PHP noob and wasn’t sure if things had moved about on my server, so I literally copied the file path from the error message that was appearing on my page in lieu of the includes since that’s where it was looking for the files.

So this a fix, but doesn’t answer why $DOCUMENT_ROOT doesn’t work anymore, I’m still curious about that if anyone has any answers!

My external (outside of WP but not domain) includes have always worked fine, but after upgrading from 1.5.1.2 to 1.5.1.3 they suddenly didn’t work and then to 1.5.2 they still don’t work even though everything else seems to be fine (permalinks, plugins, etc all working swimmingly).

Here’s how I was referencing them:
<?php include($DOCUMENT_ROOT."/includes/top-nav.php"); ?>

I attempted to make the reference absolute but my server config won’t allow URL file access. I’d rather solve the problem than use an insecure work around anyway. Any ideas?

Any all help much appreciated, the specific blog I’m having troubles with is https://www.bergerpartnership.com/news/news_blog/ and my server is dreamhost.com where I am running PHP as CGI and have ‘extra security’ toggled – whatever that means. I suppose if I can’t figure it out I will try running PHP regularly next.

[cross-post] Ahah…for those of you who can’t get Text Control to show up on the individual posts (only the config menu shows up in options), I figured out why mine doesn’t work (I think). I host with Dreamhost and I installed my first blog before they had one click installs (so, manually) on a really old domain. Turns out new domains and any time you use a one click install, your domain automatically goes into “Run PHP as CGI” mode. All my new blogs were running in this manner and none of them are able to use Text Control. I just switched my old domain from regular PHP to PHP as CGI and whatddya know? Text Control doesn’t work there anymore. Fortunately Dreamhost allows you to do either with PHP though they strongly reccomend running PHP as CGI.

Ahah…for those of you who can’t get Text Control to show up on the individual posts (only the config menu shows up in options), I figured out why mine doesn’t work (I think). I host with Dreamhost and I installed my first blog before they had one click installs (so, manually) on a really old domain. Turns out new domains and any time you use a one click install, your domain automatically goes into “Run PHP as CGI” mode. All my new blogs were running in this manner and none of them are able to use Text Control. I just switched my old domain from regular PHP to PHP as CGI and whatddya know? Text Control doesn’t work there anymore. Fortunately Dreamhost allows you to do either with PHP though they strongly reccomend running PHP as CGI.

Dreamhost – addicted. 5+ years of bliss. Their newsletter is hilarious too. PhPAdmin…already installed, btw.

They have a new wiki for support in the works, like the WordPress Codex. All in all a good marriage…since there are a lot of WP users at Dreamhost their server-related forums can be a big help, too.

Since macmanx recently switched to BlueHost because he doesn’t like running PHP as CGI, I’ll go ahead an toss in my referrer link in case you want to sign up with Dreamhost.

The referrer bonuses are awesome – I’ve referred quite a few people and pay very little for a great big package. I suggested to Dreamhost a while back that they consider setting up a referrer name for ‘wordpress’ so when you sign up with them they donate the referral booty to WordPress. They haven’t done that yet, but if you refer me I promise to donate to WordPress on your behalf ;o)

I’ve been looking into this as I have had the same problem. I don’t know if this helps but there is a bug report and according to the issue history it should be fixed in 1.5.1 as of 2/20/05.

I disabled all plugins, ran wp-admin/upgrade.php just now, reinstalled Text Control and enabled it, but that did not fix the problem.

This seems totally unrelated, but just in case, I also got this error when running upgrade.php:
WordPress database error: [Duplicate key name ‘link_visible’]
ALTER TABLE wp_links ADD KEY link_visible (link_visible)

Where/how can I get Word Press 1.5.1?

This doesn’t seem like a support related post to me. In fact, it seems like spam.

What you’ve done is way harder and potentially messier than just using .htaccess. You should be able (if you’re on an Apache server with requisite permission) set your index page in your .htaccess file to any page you want. Index.html, splash.html…whatever.

Add this to your .htaccess file:
DirectoryIndex filename.ext

Anyway, that’s how I would do it. Here’s a good basic tutorial on .htaccess files if you need it: https://customersupport.websiteproviders.net/tutorials/htaccess/

Well, you didn’t try to use /%category%/ – that’s good…I had problems with that one.

You could try running upgrade.php instead of install.php?
Related: https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/1862

As you mentioned, a lot people run into snags over this…perhaps one of these threads could help you out?
https://www.ads-software.com/support/search.php?q=permalinks+htaccess

I’ve had problems with comments in the past. I had a mysterious user with a blank name. I gave that user a name, others simply deleted them.

It would help to know some specifics so people can try to help you.
What is the site you’re talking about? Was it working before? Have you installed any new plugins, switched themes, edited theme files, etc? Made any comment-spam related changes? (I totally goofed once trying to rename the comments files to trick spammers and never did really fix it…reinstalled.)